


A Blind Fool; A Blue Galaxy

by Acai



Series: Matsuhanaiwaoi College AU [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, College AU, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, M/M, Multi, OT4, Polyamory, but only the second half, excessive usage of metaphors, hurt/comfort bingo, i love hurting oikawa, i mean there's a lil fluff, im so sorry, implied child neglect, its iwaoi for a while, its oikawa-centric, minor fluff, oikawa is sad, oikawa loves space, space, the first half is them throughout high school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7252054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd always said he was going to leave that place, even if Iwaizumi had never taken it as anything more than his strange obsession with going to space. Iwaizumi had never considered the fact that it may have meant something else. Iwaizumi had never considered the fact that he'd love the other three first years on his school's volleyball team, and above-all-else, he'd never considered the fact that he'd probably follow Oikawa anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Blind Fool; A Blue Galaxy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a horrendous, plotless, pointless drabble without any real resolution. Seriously. I'm so sorry about this. It's four am and I have no idea what I'm doing. It's unbetaed. It's Oikawa and Iwaizumi centric. Jesus CHRIST.

**A Blind Fool; A Blue Galaxy**

**For day two of hurt/comfort bingo.**

**Please submit any prompts to Mikozume on Tumblr. Thank you!**

**Alternatively Titled: In Which Iwaizumi Discovers He’s A Blind Fool And He’ll Follow Oikawa Anywhere**

                The first time that he’d said it, they’d been in fourth grade and were working on their yearly art projects. Oikawa had picked something with water colors, working carefully at mixing the colors just right. He’d been painting the lake at the park just a little way away from their houses.

Oikawa Tooru had always loved watercolors.

He tapped his paintbrush gently on the edge of the cup, ridding the bristles of the excess water before going back to mixing the blues.

“I’m going to leave someday,” he murmured, stirring the bright shade slowly.

Iwaizumi grunted, not bothering to glance up from his own project.

Oikawa smiled down at his paper as he went back to painting the blue water with the new shade of blue. “I’m gonna go someplace. Someplace really far away… like the moon!”

“You can’t go to the _moon._ Don’t be stupid,” Iwaizumi muttered, scribbling away with his crayons.

“Well, then I’ll go someplace just as good,” he cleaned off his paintbrush and set to mixing a new shade. “I’ll go somewhere big. Really big! And bright, too. There’ll be lights all over, so that it’s never dark out.”

“That’s the city,” Iwaizumi informed his friend in a bored tone, setting down his crayon. “Why’re you gonna go someplace? That’s kinda dumb.”

Fourth graders were opinionated. Oikawa didn’t look like he cared much about anyone else’s opinion at the table, though. “Cause I don’t wanna stay here.” He made it sound like that should have been obvious. His paintbrush tapped gently against the cup again as Oikawa changed the subject to the closeness of summer break, talking about how he was going to do the summer volleyball camp again.

Oikawa Tooru had always loved volleyball.

He hadn’t said it again for so long that Iwaizumi forgot all about it. Oikawa said he was going to go to space every day—how was that time any different? So he wanted to meet an alien. Big deal!

He said it again when they were in their first year of middle school. They’d managed to miss their train home and ended up walking, Oikawa balanced on the curb of the sidewalk with his hands stuck out as balance as they walked.

“I want to learn English next year as my extracurricular,” he said, breaking the rare silence.

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes. “That’s a hard class; you’d fail it for sure.”

“Rude, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa pouted for a second before sobering up. “And I know it’s a hard class.”

“Why do you want to take it, then?”

Oikawa Tooru was never a very serious person, always dramatic or pouting, adding flare to everything he did. A serious tone never seemed to fit him. “You can’t go very far just speaking Japanese. Lots of people here speak English, it’s the most widely-spoken language in the world,” he sounded like he was blandly quoting a textbook. “I could move to a different country, you know.”

Iwaizumi scoffed, fighting the urge to shove him off the curb. “Why would you want to do that? Japan is fine.”

His friend’s face stayed serious and dull for a handful of seconds that felt like years before he turned to grin at Iwaizumi with an obnoxiously wide smile that made his eyes squint just a little. “Tsk, such boring thinking, Iwa-chan!”

If Hajime knew the bounce in his step was forced after that, he didn’t say so.

 

Oikawa must have muttered that he was going to leave someday five hundred times. He whispered it into the dark, _“I’m going to leave, someday. I’m not going to come back, ever.”_ He said it when nobody could look into his eyes, when there was only a slim chance that anybody would even hear him. And he never said it to anyone else.

It made Iwaizumi wonder just how many times he whispered that promise and he didn’t hear. How many times was he really asleep when Oikawa whispered secrets into a dark room?

He would never leave, though. Every kid dreamed of going someplace bigger and better when they were little. Iwaizumi never payed it much attention.

_“I’m going to go crazy if I have to stay here any longer,”_ into a dark room with the fan humming in the background. _“I’m going to go so far away, it’ll be like this was never real,”_ into a room filled with drunks who would never remember a thing, and probably couldn’t hear over the loud music anyway. _“Do you think I’ll be able to be happy, Hajime?”_ into the phone after Iwaizumi’s said he’ll be right back.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was in their first year of high school that they met Matsukawa Issei and Hanamaki Takahiro. Iwaizumi, who really didn’t have any set opinion on the other first years of the volleyball team, took to them without hesitation. After all, it was better than bonding with the third years, who seemed power-hungry and let their age get to their head until they were irritating beyond belief.

Oikawa seemed more hesitant. Still jovial and excited about nearly everything, it seemed, but he always seemed reluctant to join their little group of four.

“Iwa-chan,” he said one day, on the train home from school. “We’re always going to be friends, right?”

“Huh?” Iwaizumi cocked an eyebrow, turning to look at Oikawa.

“I’m not saying _best friends_ ,” Oikawa’s voice paused. “But we’re always going to be _friends?_ ”

Iwaizumi shook his head and Oikawa’s mouth fell. “Dumbass. Whoever said we were going to stop being best friends? If I think I’m getting rid of you any time soon, I’m wrong. And you’d have a pretty hard time shaking me off, too.”

Oikawa seemed content enough with that answer, settling back in his seat and going back to whatever it was that he was doing on his phone.

“And that means,” Iwaizumi continued, going back to staring out the window. “That you don’t need to worry about the other first years at volleyball.”

He didn’t need to look over to know that Oikawa was flushed. His indignant stutter gave it away clearly enough. “W-what? I wasn’t worried about the first years!”

“Uh-huh.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With an apparently resolved worry, Oikawa fell wholeheartedly into place in the group at practice. As much as they all liked to think that banding together against the pushy third years would help them out, it didn’t do much but allow them to get pushed around as a group, rather than individually. Still, they’d take what they could get.

By the time that their first year ended and their second year had begun, it would be weird to _not_ be in their silly group of  four. With the pushy third years gone and new— _less_ pushy—third years in their place, their reason for _being_ in a huddle was diminished. Either way, that didn’t stop them from doing it. If it wasn’t volleyball practice, it was someplace outside of it. Their houses had their pros and cons, so they went to all of them just as often as any of the others. Iwaizumi did worry, occasionally and when the thought crossed his mind, that Oikawa’s fear of their friendship faltering had remained, if only in disguise rather than out in the open.

Oikawa Tooru had always been an easy person to read, though, and it wasn’t very hard to tell that when they ended up walking miles away from any of their homes in the middle of the night, Oikawa’s grin was one out of genuine amusement. When Iwaizumi somehow ended up two hours late to Hanamaki’s house and found them in the kitchen attempting to bake, Tooru’s laugh was loud enough that he heard it from the door when he walked in.

Iwaizumi’s own worry began when his heart pounded at hearing that laugh, at seeing that grin, at spending those days with him.

Iwaizumi’s worry progressed when his heart would pound hardest when it was the four of them.

Iwaizumi’s worry became a downright problem when he realized _why_ his heart did gymnastics for the other boys.

And it became close to depressing when he wondered if their hearts did the same thing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Halfway through their second year, Oikawa’s knee stops having _little pains_ and completely gives out. He tells them all he’s fine, and nobody comments on the only giveaway that he’s not.

His eyes are bright and are crinkling at the edges because of his smile, but they’re rimmed with red and look bloodshot.

Matsukawa tells him that’s good, because if he wasn’t they’d all have stopped everything to make sure he was okay.

Hanamaki slugs his shoulder and adds that it’s good that Oikawa’s fine, because nobody else on their team could serve and they had a game in a week and a half that they’d need him for when he was allowed back in.

Iwaizumi says that Oikawa had better remember to show up that night, or they’ll be forced to watch something other than the _great cinematic masterpiece_ that was Oikawa’s favorite alien movie.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was weird, _being_ the third years. As much fun as it would probably be to terrorize the first years the way that they got shoved around, they refrained.

Matsukawa argued that hey, the bully third years had been the reason they’d grouped up, and even after Hanamaki had sternly told them not to mess with the first and second years, Oikawa still dropped little comments bathed in innocence as a disguise.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“If you leave a place behind, is it possible to leave everything you ever knew with it?” Oikawa asks one day, when it’s just him and Iwaizumi, but Iwaizumi doesn’t have a clue what to reply to that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Halfway through their third year of school, Iwaizumi started to think about the future. Sure, it was probably something that he should have done a long time ago, but he’d never really had the urgent need to do so.

Still, now that it boiled down to it and there was only a few months to decide where to go and apply for a college, it was probably the time to start thinking about it. Some part of him assumed that Oikawa would go one with volleyball, that he’d get a scholarship sometime this year and go on to the pro sports.

But another part of him tugged up a memory of him spending his whole life whispering about going someplace far away, about learning English with the sole intention of moving out of the _country._

And Iwaizumi reminded himself that this was Oikawa, who never told the whole truth and who exaggerated and had to add extravagance to everything.

But, still. He never lingered on the things that he added for pizazz, and he was never one for doing something difficult for no good reason. Why would he have taken years to perfect English for his ongoing joke about visiting space?

 

“Does Oikawa ever say anything about what he’s going to do after high school to either of you?” Iwaizumi turned to face the other two boys, having waited nearly a week for an opportunity to talk to them without Oikawa there to hear and bat away and suspicions.

The perfect opportunity ended up being in the locker room after Oikawa had already dressed out and gone to the court to warm up.

Matsukawa shrugged helpfully. Hanamaki finished tugging on his shirt, glancing at Iwaizumi. “No, not to me, at least. I just kind of assumed he would stick with volleyball.”

“Has he said anything to you?”

Iwaizumi shrugged back, pulling off his own shirt. “No.” He paused, frowning. “He’s never told me that he’s definitely going to continue with volleyball. I kind of assumed that, too. But…”

He shrugs on his shirt, turning to see the other two boys watching him now.

 “But?” Hanamaki prompts.  “You wouldn’t have brought it up like that if  you weren’t worried or something.”

Iwaizumi turned back to his locker, putting his uniform inside and closing it. “He used to talk about leaving a lot. Not since…a couple of months ago, actually? I always thought he was kidding. He’s—I mean, he’s Oikawa, you know? But he’s always serious when he says it. He’s learning advanced English right? He said something about doing that so that he’d be able to go farther. I thought he was kidding. I’m not…entirely sure, anymore.”

Hanamaki’s silent as he shuts his own locker, but he’s frowning. Matsukawa was frowning, but shrugged it off.

“We’ll know if he’s going someplace, right? He can’t get rid of us that easily.” Matsukawa pushed open the locker room door, leaving silence behind him when it closed noisily. Iwaizumi stared at it for what felt like ages before moving to follow.

A hand on his arm stopped him.

“I know we just don’t question some things, but we all think about them in our heads right?” Hanamaki paused, looking like he was about to just stop talking and follow Mattsun. He continued. “So here’s something I think I want to question out loud now. We only go to Oikawa’s on Wednesday and Saturday, right? He’s never flat out said he can’t do any other day, but…”

“His parents work those days. They don’t like him having people over when they’re home. He’s told you both that.” Iwaizumi balanced his weight on his heels.

“He doesn’t get along with his parents, right?”

“No, but…not in the way that would make him _leave,_ right? They argue now and then. Everyone does.”

Hanamaki looked frustrated for a brief moment, like he was trying to convey a point that Iwaizumi wasn’t understanding.

“You know better than both of us what I’m talking about, Iwaizumi.” His face went neutral again and his hand slipped away from Iwaizumi’s arm.

Hanamaki slipped out of the locker room, and Iwaizumi could hear him calling to Matsukawa to toss him a ball before the door clicked shut again. He followed, Oikawa bounding over to him before the door was even closed.

“Iwa-chan’s _slow_ today~! Better hope you’re not that slow during practice!” He spun a ball on top of his finger like it was a basketball, and Iwaizumi wondered to himself if he’d always looked like he was posing for a magazine naturally. His head cocked to one side and his hair spilling into his face, a grin tugging at his lips that made his eyes crinkle a little around the corners, he looked like he could be on a cover.

But instead he was in the gym, tugging Iwaizumi along as they had to get started that very instant.

“Geez, calm down, we’ve got hours still.”

Oikawa clucked his tongue and made a _tsk_ sound. “We’re running out of time, Iwa-chan. Don’t waste what we’ve got left.”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes but got into position regardless. If it was up to Oikawa, they’d practice for months for a single game against an amateur school. They were hardly running out of time—they’d beat the school they were going up against no problem.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Oikawa Tooru had always loved blue. He practically squealed when they were handed their uniforms in high school, eyes locked on the blue stripes that he nearly shoved in Iwaizumi’s face.

“It’s blue, Iwa-chan!”

“It’s always been blue, stupid…”

Oikawa brushed his comment off, carefully folding the outfit and stuffing it in his bag. For such a dramatic and energetic person, he always handled everything like it was made of glass and switched subjects quickly.

Sometimes Iwaizumi wondered how they got along—because even if Oikawa drove him up a wall and Iwaizumi ended up insulting him more than complimenting him, they got along.

He _hated_ shopping. Oikawa found some sort of passion in it.  Hajime got dragged along.

That also meant he was promoted to the default opinion-giver, having to give his comment on clothes and smells. _Candles,_ for Christ’s sake.

Oikawa Tooru had always loved candles.

He found a particular love for a dark blue candle that sat in the window of a shop that looked like it’d been around since the early nineteen hundreds, at the very least. He managed to get Iwaizumi to agree that it smelled nice. He bought it without even reading the name of it.

“ _Blissful Memories_ ,” he grinned, reading it outside. “It doesn’t smell like blissful memories, does it Iwa-chan?”

“Obviously not,” he muttered. “Can we go home now?”

His comment was ignored. “Well, I guess we’ll have to _make_ it smell like that!”

“Uh huh. How?”

“By burning it every time that we hang out at home,” Oikawa tucked the candle back into the bag. “Do you think we’ll be able to burn the whole candle by the time we graduate senior year?”

“That’s only five months,” Iwaizumi glanced over. “And that’s a really big candle.”

“We can do it!” Oikawa grinned, flashing him a peace sign. “We’ll just have to make a lot of _blissful memories._ ”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When it seemed they’d finally be able to finish the candle and the whole room smelled of it’s scent, Oikawa leaned over and blew it out, staring at the smoke that curled up and out of it.

“Why’d you do that?” Iwaizumi watched him with a raised eyebrow. “Weren’t you determined to finish it?”

“Mm,” Oikawa hummed. “But now it really does smell like memories, and it’ll be pointless to run out of the smell forever…” he watched it with the same unusual expression for another long drag of seconds before blinking the look away and grinning again, capping the candle and tucking it into a little box.

Iwaizumi had seen him drop other things into that cardboard box—ticket stubs and photos of the four of them and art pieces. He’d always assumed the trinkets in there held some kind of sentiment.

Oikawa Tooru had always loved being sentimental.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_“How cool is space, Hajime?” Oikawa asks, one night. He only ever calls him ‘Hajime’ when he’s being serious, but he doesn’t seem all too serious right now, gabbering on about space. “Millions and millions of miles away…it’d get lonely, up there without anyone else. It’d get lonely thousands of miles away from everything here, don’t you think?” His voice wavered for a second, even if he was still grinning. “Don’t you think, though, it might be better to be lonely, sometimes?”_

_~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~_

Matsukawa and Iwaizumi had been accepted to the same collage, Iwaizumi with a volleyball scholarship and Matsukawa with an interest in the school’s main program. Hanamaki had selected a school a thirty minute commute away from their college. Oikawa hadn’t even applied to any colleges.

Though he’d been offered different scholarships for his serving ability, he hadn’t done more than glance at the offers, neither rejecting them, nor accepting them.

Iwaizumi would have liked to think that he had a plan, maybe one that he just wasn’t willing to tell them, but he knew Oikawa well enough to knew that Oikawa didn’t know any better than any of them what he was going to do. Whether that meant he’d be one of the ones that spent a year deciding, Iwaizumi wasn’t quite sure. When he brought the topic up with the other two boys, though, his worries were swatted away with reassurances that he would be fine.

And that was probably true. Oikawa probably _would_ be fine, because he had the three of them. But he wouldn’t be fine of his own doing or by fate itself weaving its luck into their lives. If he was going to be _fine,_ it would be because of something that they all did to ensure that.

Iwaizumi wasn’t sure how to explain that them. He didn’t say anything at all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_“No it’s not, idiot,” Iwaizumi disagrees, scoffing. “But you don’t have to think you’ll be alone, anyway. You’re stuck with all of us._

_“Are you saying you’d follow me up to space?” Oikawa teases, his eyes glimmering with mischief and the serious mood gone._

_Iwaizumi scoffs again, allowing his head to loll back onto the pillows. “I’d follow you anywhere, dumbass.”_

_Oikawa doesn’t reply for a while after that, and Iwaizumi assumes he’s fallen asleep. Just when Iwaizumi himself is about to sleep, he hears a soft, “oh,” from the other side of the bed._

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hanamaki was balanced on the counter, an open box of creampuffs sitting next to him, with one sole puff missing from the box and in his hands. Iwaizumi’s fingers tacked away at a keyboard and Oikawa looked like he was debating snapping the laptop shut and forcing him to watch the movie—as if Iwaizumi hadn’t seen it a hundred times before.

Matsukawa sat on the other end of the couch, sandwiching Iwaizumi in the middle. Not that he was complaining, as it was comfortable here with them on both sides. Hanamaki, whether he could even hear the TV from where he was sitting or not, refused to abandon the creampuffs to listen to Matsukawa’s urges and sit on the couch with them.

Oikawa looked completely engrossed in the movie, even if he’d seen it hundreds of times before. How he didn’t get sick of it, none of them could figure out, but it was his favorite for a reason, Iwaizumi supposed.

Matsukawa’s foot repeatedly prodded his side until Iwaizumi rolled his eyes and looked over to see him pointing to the counter where Hanamaki was still eating the creampuffs.

“Make him come over here and sit with us,” Matsukawa’s voice was tinged with whininess, and Iwaizumi wasn’t sure exactly which thing was making him roll his eyes. Even so, he did it with a touch of fondness.

“Makki,” he called halfheartedly. “Come and sit with us. The creampuffs will wait for you. It’s bad for you to eat all of them at once, anyway.”

“What are you, my mom?”

“No, but I don’t want to watch you puke all over the floor later.”

“Best to look away, then~,”

Matsukawa twisted to stare alongside Iwaizumi. “I _will_ stage an intervention.”

When Hanamaki didn’t make any move except to take another bite, Matsu clambered over the side of the couch, into the kitchen and plucked it from his hand, taking a rather large bite of his own. He snapped the paper box shut, tucking the creampuffs on top of the fridge as if Hanamaki couldn’t reach them.

“Sit with us. The couch is big enough for four.”

“Couldn’t bear to be apart from me for a whole thirty minutes?” Hanamaki teased, slipping down from the counter and returning with the other boy either way.

Iwaizumi inched closer to Oikawa, letting the other two boys figure out the rest for themselves. At some point Oikawa’s head comes to rest on Iwaizumi’s lap and Matsukawa and Hanamaki end up threaded together in some sort of strategy to fit on the couch, though it looks more like cuddling than anything else.

At some point he feels something wet drop onto his leg and looks down to find Oikawa’s hair falling into a red-stained face and bloodshot eyes with silent tears racing their way down his face.

“Jesus, Tooru,” Iwaizumi realized that probably wasn’t the best reaction to such a thing. “Jesus, okay, sit up, alright? Just—fuck.” When the movie goes silent, Iwaizumi knows that they’ve paused it because they’ve noticed the situation at hand.

Iwaizumi shifted Oikawa up, falling silent as his chest heaved in what looked like a silent sob.

_It makes you wonder how long someone spends crying quietly._

When Iwaizumi realized that clutching Oikawa’s shoulder to hold him up wasn’t the most helpful thing in the situation, he let the other boy sag against his chest. The next time that his chest heaves it’s less silent, and more of a gasping wheeze.

“I can’t believe you,” Oikawa’s voice comes out in a sobbing gasp. Iwaizumi’s mouth opened in a question, cut off by the other’s continuation. “I can’t believe I spent my whole life telling you I wanted to leave, and then you all went and made me want to _stay._ ”

“I—what? You’re not making any s—,”

Oikawa cut him off again. “I _can’t_ stay here, I don’t want to,” his voice is pleading now. “But I _can’t_ leave. Not when you’re going to make me want to stay the fucking way that you do. There wouldn’t be _this._ There wouldn’t be _you._ There would be _us._ ”

Hanamaki remained quiet, even when Matsukawa chimed in. “You’re going to have to tell us a little more than that.”

Oikawa left the sanctuary of Iwaizumi’s chest to look at the other two boys. He sniffed pathetically, though his voice barely gave away his weak appearance.

“I just want to leave this place. I don’t know where to. I don’t know how or where or when or why. But I was going to leave, and I was going to leave everything and everyone, like it never _existed._ Like _you_ never existed—like nobody ever did. Just a really, really long dream. Like waking up from a coma.” Oikawa paused. “But, then. Then you had to go and be yourselves.”

His chest heaved with another suppressed sob. “And now I don’t know what I want. _Assholes._ ” He shook his head just when Hanamaki moved to wipe his Oikawa’s wet cheeks off with his sweater sleeve.

“Us?” He asks, voice soft but lilting with confusion.

“ _You,_ ” Oikawa laughed. It was a wet and warbled sound. “Yes, _you._ I just—I just…”

“You just?” Iwaizumi prompted.

Oikawa looked Iwaizumi right in the eyes. “I just really want to kiss you all, sometimes.”

“Oh.” Iwaizumi was fairly sure that he stopped breathing. His heart forgot how to beat and every teen fiction romance cliché about heart-stopping-words came to life. In a movie, that would be when the music would cut off and it would be silent while they stared into each other’s eyes. In reality, Matsukawa laughed loudly next to them and broke the moment.

“I dunno ‘bout them, but you sure as hell don’t have to _want_ to kiss me.”

Hanamaki slugged his arm, scowling at him. “Don’t ruin the moment.” Oikawa’s eyes tore away from Iwaizumi’s to look at the other two boys. Hanamaki shrugged.

“You can, if you want.” Iwaizumi watched Oikawa’s eyes travel right back.

“Okay,” Oikawa conceded, eyes still red and looking more lost than they’d ever looked. “Okay.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It’s clumsy, a group of four. None of them has a clue what they’re doing—even Oikawa, who’s dated plenty of girls before—but they manage alright.

Oikawa never brought up the matter that got them all together, and when the other three tried to prompt him, he only glanced away and gave a vague answer.

When the school year ended and they were all officially done with high school forever, Oikawa told them that they absolutely _needed_ to go to his house for their celebration.

At Matsukawa’s argument that Oikawa’s house was further from the place they were going to eat at, Oikawa only tsked and continued insisting.

 

In his room, he pulled out the box. And from the box, he pulled out the candle.

“How many things smell like this candle now?” He asked them, setting it on the ground in front of them. “How many things smell like a cheap candle now, because we burned it at the right moments?”

“I don’t know, Oikawa,” Matsukawa sounds resigned, unwilling to do math now that they’d graduated. “What’s this about?”

Oikawa’s eyes flicked up to meet Hanamaki’s, but he continued talking without explanation. “Has the smell _tainted_ those memories? Has it made it harder to remember those things without nostalgia that makes you miss those times? Or has it improved them?” He paused. “Would those memories be better _without_ the smell tainting them? Or would they be less pleasant to remember.”

“Oikawa—?”

He hummed, picking it back up. “We could burn the last bit of this candle. But I don’t know if we’d be able to get rid of the smell forever.” He paused, setting it into the box and closing the lid again. Iwaizumi wondered what other things he kept tucked away in there. “I think…I think it would just soil good memories, to get rid of it. The memories would be bitter instead of good because I’d never be able to smell the smell again, and it’s a really good scent.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Are you running a fever?”

Oikawa _tsk_ ed again, frowning. “I’m trying to be deep, and you’re ruining the mood! What I _mean_ is, if I left all of this behind, I’d turn the good memories bad. And…I don’t want to do that.”

It seemed like nobody knew what to reply to that, with the way that they all fell silent. Oikawa didn’t say anything else, tipping his head sideways and grinning at them like he hadn’t possibly just said something incredibly important.

“Then don’t,” Hanamaki replied, a frown planted on his face. Iwaizumi wondered if it was at all possible to make that frown go away. “You don’t _have_ to lea—,”

“I do,” Oikawa replied flatly, though he continued to grin. “I just want to go away. But I can’t if it means leaving all of you, and I think I hate that.”

Matsukawa shifted, uncrossing his legs. “You hate that?”

“Because nothing is guaranteed. This isn’t permanent. This… is a risk, at best.”

“Is that all it is to you?”

“Yes. But I never said it isn’t the best risk I’ve taken so far.” His grin grew wide enough that his eyes crinkle at the edges, and it was real, in that moment at least.

Matsukawa slugged his arm, letting a lazy smile replace his own grin. “Sap.”

“You like it,” Oikawa smirked, leaning forward so that his nose was nearly touching Matsu’s. His voice is dramatic when his hand reaches forward to cup the other’s cheek, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Kiss me, you fool.”

Matsukawa snorted. “You’re the only fool here, dumbass.”

Oikawa made an indignant noise. “Rude!” He leaned forward, and Matsukawa met him with the kiss regardless of his teasing.

“Get a room,” Iwaizumi rolled his eyes. Hanamaki still looked serious, the subject at hand obviously not forgotten with him.

“We’re _in_ a room,” Oikawa argued, sticking his tongue out childishly. “You’re just jealous, Iwa-chan!”

“Maybe he is,” Hanamaki chimed in. “But weren’t we talking about something that needs to be talked about?”

“We’re not staying in this town, and you know that. We’re going to be five hours away from here. What scares you so much that you can’t be five hours away from here? Or five and a _half_ hours away from here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Oikawa waved it off with his hand, eyes flicking toward the window.

“Your parents?” Hanamaki pushed on.

“I’m serious.” Tooru’s voice lost its playfulness.

“It is, isn’t it? We all know it.”

“ _Hanamaki._ ”

“You and Iwaizumi know it better than Makki and I, even if Iwaizumi acts like he doesn’t think that’s it.”

“Hanamaki—,”

“But I don’t think that should be enough to scare you away from everything and everyone that you _do_ like about this place.”

“Makki—,”

“I don’t know if it’s selfish, but I don’t want you to leave, okay? Just _tell_ us what it is.”

“ _Takahiro._ ”

Hanamaki shut up at Oikawa’s bland tone. It looked like they were trying to stare each other down, seeing who would blink first and lose.

“Takahiro,” Oikawa said again. He looked like he had more to say, but couldn’t figure out the words to put to the thought. He was silent for another long stretch of time. “As much as I’d love to sit around right now and have a deep, emotional chat about the future and our individual thoughts, etcetera, etcetera, now isn’t the time.”

“If you’re going to stay, you have to accept one of those scholarships soon.” Matsukawa argued.

“I already did,” Oikawa muttered, eyes flicking back to the window.

….

“…what?” Iwaizumi resisted the urge to reach forward and grab Oikawa by the shirt. “Hey, dumbass, did I just hear that right?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Oikawa rolled his eyes. “It’s the same college as you. I keep trying to tell myself to withdraw from the school, but…I don’t think I’d manage, honestly, without the three of you. I don’t know anything _but_ having you all in my life—even if it was just Iwaizumi for the longest time, but…it’d be weird. It’d be too weird. I’d come back anyway. It’d be pointless to go anywhere.

“And most of all, I don’t want to stop playing volleyball. Not just in general, but with you. Even if you two aren’t continuing on with it, I know you are, Iwa-chan, and I don’t want to go to some other school and play with some other strangers. So. That’s that. I guess.”

…..

…..

“ _Idiot,_ ” Hanamaki hissed. Oikawa’s frown deepened, but he refused to turn away from the window. It was dark out, the kind of dark that Oikawa liked to say was perfect for looking at the sky in the nighttime. “Idiot!” He repeated. “You—how long has it been since you accepted it? God _dammit,_ Tooru, do you know how long I’ve spent worrying over that? _Idiot._ You’re a complete and utter _idiot._ ”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The summer lasts forever and a brief time at the same time. It feels like it was too long when it’s over, but feels like it was only a second when you’re in it. Like you blink and an entire years gone by.

Iwaizumi wasn’t sure what their freshman year of college meant to Oikawa. In an apartment five hours and fifteen minutes away from their old town, was it too close for comfort? Or was it far enough away.

Iwaizumi tried not to tell himself that they should have been enough. That even with their old town being as close as it was, the fact that he was with the three of them should have made that fine. He tried not to be offended when he was sure that it wasn’t fine, that it was still too close for Oikawa’s comfort. He tried not to be offended when their being there wasn’t enough to instantly solve things.

That wasn’t how the world worked. Their presence didn’t solve everything, but surely it helped.

Surely the distance helped, because being able to see them every night and every morning, and being able to go out and get coffee when they were both free from classes and work made it easier for Oikawa to act childishly annoying, sticking his tongue out and whining excessively.

And yet, Iwaizumi didn’t have a clue what it was to Oikawa Tooru, because Oikawa Tooru blatantly refused the topic as conversation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizume Hajime wasn’t sure about a whole lot of things.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was late at night, and Iwaizumi wasn’t sure what part of him had decided that going out this late at night would ever be a good idea in any way at all.

And yet, there they were, out in some part of town that they’d never been to at one in the morning.

With Matsukawa’s classes being insanely early in the morning, and Hanamaki having to wake up just as early to travel, it was just Iwaizumi and Oikawa, in a way that it hadn’t been since their last year of middle school. And while something about it felt off, now, something about it felt nostalgic in a good kind of way.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue on with volleyball for the rest of his life, or if that was what he wanted to go to college for.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And while Oikawa had been _seeming_ to be better and better, there was still night like these when he’d get some faraway, bothered look in his eyes. Yet, Iwaizumi was never able to bring himself to say anything more than concerned comments disguised as nonchalant commentary.

Maybe that was the real reason that they were out for a walk this early in the morning.

And cars drive by now and then, but hardly often enough to really break the silence between the two of them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He wasn’t sure what he’d do when volleyball wasn’t a career choice anymore, even though  he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do it forever.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And when Oikawa stepped down into the street, letting his feet hit the road silently, like he was trying not to make any noise at all, his face was blank and his movements were slow.

By the time he reached the other side of the street, pausing like he was debating even stepping back up onto the sidewalk, Iwaizumi had followed him without even truly thinking about it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But he was sure that he’d follow Oikawa Tooru anywhere.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When they’re in their third years of college and Oikawa’s still around, Iwaizumi’s fairly sure that he’s staying around for good. And when everything with them grows comfortable enough that Iwaizumi can’t only not imagine a life without them, but he can’t imagine a life without being able to kiss them and come home to them.

He thinks they all feel the same way, with the way that Hanamaki fits perfectly curled into his stomach when they fall asleep, and with the way that Oikawa always ensures that they’re greeted adaquently aat the door with a kiss when they arrive home for the day, and with the way that Matsukawa still texts them good morning on the days when he leaves for class before any of the rest of them are even awake.

He was sure that his heart only beat that quickly for them because of a crush, and he’d thought that after coming home to them for three years his heart wouldn’t pick up upon seeing them come home after their classes.

And yet, it still beat just as quickly when he looked at them.

And it should have been insane, the way that he still forgot how to breathe when he saw one of them bathed in sunlight or wearing something new that should have been _illegal_ with how good it looked on them.

And if love was that feeling never going away, then he was positively in love with every single one of them.

If love was not truly caring when Hanamaki sat on the counter to eat creampuffs rather than on the couch with them, then he was absolutely in love with Hanamaki Takahiro.

And if love was not minding waking up in the middle of the night because Matsukawa _kicked_ in his sleep, then he was completely in love with Matsukawa Issei.

If love was never hesitating to skip class to spend the day with Oikawa on a bad day, then he was fully in love with Oikawa Tooru.

And he could only hope they felt the same way the way he was sure that he did, because Iwaizumi really would follow them all anywhere.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was a lot of things that Oikawa Tooru loved. Oikawa Tooru loved the color blue. Oikawa Tooru loved being sentimental. Oikawa Tooru loved space. And, above all else, Oikawa Tooru loved being _fashionably_ late.

It didn’t matter what to, apparently, because he had somehow managed to be fifteen minutes late to a dinner date that _he’d planned._

He sauntered in late and flashed them a peace sign as if he was on time.

Hanamaki rolled his eyes, halfheartedly threatening to punch him before walking up to the lady at the front for their table.

Matsukawa harassed him for showing up late the entire time they walked to their table, and Oikawa only waved it off.

“ _Mattsun,_ ” he began. “Life does not always go according to plan. So, you see, of course we’re all late sometimes.”

“Is that you trying to be deep again? Because you suck at being deep.”

“No, that’s me making up excuses for being late.” His stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and flashed them all a peace sign, as if one of them was taking his photo.

He went ignored by the other three.

“Hey,” he prodded Iwaizumi’s side. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey—,”

“ _What,_ you pest?”

“I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you, too.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Author's Note:**

> If you've got a prompt for what you'd like me to do next for hurt/comfort bingo (matsukawaiwaoi and bokuakakurotsuki only, for this one, please!) feel free to send it to any of the media below:  
> tumblr: mikozume  
> kik: mikozume  
> Fanfiction: mikozume  
> Twitter: mikozume  
> Or say it in a comment below. I crave comments. Thank you all~


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